Adult content has faced full restrictions on the Internet in the past few weeks—whether it’s pressure from pressure groups on payment processors or governments trying to limit access to adult material by mandatory age verification.Now the game platform Itch seems to have introduced new measures to cooperate with the latter, and some game developers and authors have found that their homepage on the platform is no longer accessible from the UK.
Itch.io's prompt statement reads: "We value global users and are committed to complying with local laws and regulations. Although we cannot provide specific content or services to UK users at present, we will continue to evaluate the service content and compliance framework, and look forward to providing more content in the future." Strangely, the works uploaded by these creators through Itch and their collections can still be viewed normally, but the homepage of the developer who created and uploaded these content is inaccessible. The page shows a new prompt saying that the move is to comply with the UK Cybersecurity Act.
There are game authors on social media to remind people to pay attention to this change.And proved that when the network location is set to UK, she really cannot access her home page on Itch.After manually entering age, you can view his work, but the author's homepage cannot be opened in any way.The same goes for other adult games and creators.
Under the UK Cybersecurity Act, the website has the responsibility to ensure that users under the age of 18 cannot access adult content.Foreign social media are also implementing a strengthened age verification mechanism.The gaming industry is also starting to move – the Xbox platform now offers age verification, which will be enforced next year.
At the same time, platforms such as Itch and Steam are under pressure to completely remove adult content.This stems from the campaign initiated by the anti-porn organization "Collective Scream", but it is also related to the "2025 Plan".The current movement is threatening the freedom of game developers and giving payment processors the power to force the platform to remove disputed games.
